Jason's Blog

An oil change is an easy thing to do, provided you have the right tools. Draining your oil into a square flat pan is a good idea But not if it has a crack in it and lest the oil out almost as fast as it goes in Pouring the oil out of the pan into an old oil can is a good idea But not if your funnel gets blocked and the oil spills out over the top Hammering a screw driver into the spin on oil filter is one way of getting purchase on it to get it off Hammering two holes causes oil to squirt out of one hole into your eye Staggering about the garage with oil in your eye looking for a rag to wipe your face on is OK Unless you to kick over an old oil container full of waste oil that you forgot to put the top on As you can tell, today I have been learning that I should not play with oil first thing in the morning. It's all cleared up now, ready for some trunnion oiling - another messy job! Trouble is today I have some family stuff to do that entails me getting dressed in tidy clothes - sa...

Bought myself a vacuum gauge off eBay for a tenner - we'll see just how much this engine sucks and how well it stacks up to the factory figures. You see a PI relies on good vacuum to adjust the fule delivery - something I am now accutely aware of following Guru Pearson's wise teachings. (James, where's that photo??) Playing with the metering unit today I found the right feeler gauge to insert between the datum and the roller by trial and error - it's a metric feeler with "20" on it so I'm guessing .2 of a millimeter? That converts to 0.007874 of an inch which bears little resmblence to the "couple of thou" comments from the Guru - I hope I've done it right! I ran the car for a while with the feeler gauge inserted, a bit of gaffer tape could have held it in ofr a drive around but I decided that it seemed so much better that it's was there or there abouts. Any bigger and the engine died, any smaller and the effect was negligable. So I set t...

The full story is that the gauge worked fine for years. I took the tank out and welded in a new bigger bore outlet for the PI, washing the tank and generally having it at all sorts of angles in the process. I think the gauge worked fine after that but immediately I'd done the welding I replaced the tacho cable and disturbed the instruments in the process. The gauge then read zero so I pulled it out and found a dodgy earth, I put a new terminal on the earth (I think this is the earth for the light and nothing to do with gauge operation). So then the gauge read full (wrongly but I thought it was OK). Last night my brother in law came round (I'm recovering some lost data from his laptop for him) and so I pressed him into fault finding service - he used to race a Vitesse in the early 90's and is a lifelong Porsche technician so he can be very useful :-) Testing voltages and resistances, pulling wires off the sender and joining them together all indicated that there was an inter...

I went up to Canley’s yesterday to help Dave get the venue ready for the driver’s briefing and to get him to lay hands upon the Vitesse. I reciprocated by laying hands on his Stag, dredging up my knowledge of SU fuel pumps from 25 years ago (my first car was a Morris Minor) and being entrusted with rebuilding the distributor internals - first time I'd ever seen dual points, interesting! The Vitesse had been pretty good on the way up, the fuel pump behaved and felt cool when I tested it. I ran in daylight with the lights on dip to ensure nothing got too hot in my new wiring – an hour+ running like that was fine. The fuse holder was warm but not excessively hot – I didn’t burn my fingers again! I bought a new one anyway to be sure. There is an annoying vibration over 70 mph, it’s one I can feel through my backside, the steering wheel is fine. It feels like driveline – the prop is new so could it be rear wheel balance? These tyres haven’t been on a year and were fully balanced when fi...

Here are the relays, nestling up in the dry and out of the way yet accessible if needs be. And another shot supposed to show them in context but I was distracted by my nice engine!

Well what have I learned today? When something is smoking, it is not a good idea to touch it because you WILL burn your finger! I didn't get the time I needed at the car tonight, I fiddled with the timing and it seemed to be running better so I jumped in and sped off down the road. Suddenly, no lights! Damn! That's when I realised what the problem was, well after I blistered my finger! That spare fuse box I installed had been in mt spares stock for a few years, it was well tarnished. I "cleaned" it up a bit when I fitted it but not much, in fact not enough! the fuse was barely making contact and the contact it was making was crap. I removed it, after it had cooled down a bit! I then gave it the once over in the sand blaster cured the corrosion. I refitted it all, put the lights on and then, this is the good bit, I used the temperature probe on my multimeter to see if it was still too hot! It was hot but it never got too hot! The main issue was that I lost a bit of con...

Headlamps completed - relays fitted, second fuse box added, wiring tidied up and loom taped up, 100watt mains in (OK so they are the wrong bulbs but we'll gloss over that - eBay has turned up a pair of the correct P45t fittings - 100 watt mains for £6.50 delivered - they popped up and I sanpped them on a buy-it now). It's all nice and neat under the bonnet now. Fired her up and noticed that the fuel gauge was registering zero, not right. Temp gauge worked fine but fuel gauge didn't! Fiddled about under the dash and found a rather dodgy earth connector (just the wires twisted round the mounting) made up a new eye connector and reinstalled it all. Works fine. I'd always wanted to fix the wipers on this car since I've had it - they work but don't sweep the whole screen. I'd been told that the gear in the woper motor was probably wrong, it should be stamped 160 and was probably stamped 130 - sure enough it was. I swapped the whole motor out for a spare that I ch...

OK maybe not Japanese but certainly Johnny Foreigner is to blame :-) Half an hour Googling has revealed the sitiation. The Cibie lenses accept the Halogen H4 P45t bulbs as opposed to the more usual Halogen H4 P43t (three prongs). Apparently these lenses were meant for a Kawasaki motorbike! Although I found most of the helpful stuff on a GT40 discussion board. Anyway, I've found that I can either buy some new bulbs of the correct type OR buy some adapters OR change the lenses OR just bodge the buggers in anyway! I think I'll buy the right bulbs :-) Now to find me a motorcycle shop that stocks some 100w mains. Ooooo - you can get 160w mains, now that's just silly. The other bulbs can go in the Sixfire, I think that's already relayed up for high power headlights!

So I've done my relays, wiring, fuses and whotnot, I've even taped up the loom so that it's nice and tidy using proper loom tape. As an aside, if you are thinking of doing some loom work, get some of this stuff it's really easy to use and looks excellent, far better than the self adhesive crap! So I come to put the new bulbs in and guess what, they aren't the same! The are marked the same with H4 although the new ones are marked H4 U. The new ones are what I'd expect, with 3 prongs. The old ones are altogether larger and round with pressed location dimples in them. They fit snuggly in the Cibbie lenses and are rtained by two clips. The new ones will fit but look awkward and leave a gap between the bulb and the lense - they just don't look right although they work fine and look OK from the front. So, what's going on!!?? Thoughts anyone!?

Well those nice chaps from Auotosparks came up trumps as promised and I have all the neccessary parts to finish the job so last night I went out to get stuck in, then my brother-in-law turned up. He had crashed his laptop and was somewhat upset as it had all his photos on it and he had no back up. I came into the house and spent the next 3 hours trying to salvage it - didn't succeed as I need some means of recovering the files off the laptop onto some other media that it will recognise in it's knackered state. Never mind, a quick trip onto eBay to get the neccessary and he'll be sorted soon as it arrives. Nil progress on car. Today I had to go out at 5 and wasn't back 'til late, where upon a cold beer and supper was waiting for me so I settled into that and yup, no progres on the car! Tomorrow I have to go to Manchester for a couple of days with work and you guessed it - no progress on the car! So a week will go and I'll have done bugger all!! Grrrrrr Roll on th...

I usually get my wiring odds and sods from Autosparks ever since I met the boss man at a show a few years ago. So impressive what his knowledge that he was able to produce exactly the correct connectors, wiring gauge and colour for a rear light rewire on a Herald that it's stuck in my mind ever since. Anyway, I ordered up some stuff to do the headlight relay conversion, including some inline fuse holders - one to use and one for "stock". I came to do the job yesterday and found that the fuse holders were incomplete - basically I had 4 male ends, 4 springs but no female tops and no connectors. A picking cock up, never mind. But even if the holders had been complete they would have been too tight on the chunky 35 amp cable I wanted to fit one into - a rethink was needed. So I called them up, they were suitably apologetic and saif they'd get the replacement parts out to me asap so I could make up 4 complete holders (I only ordered 2 so there's a bonus in there for m...

Here's my welding all tidied up and painted. I used a 3/8 barbed hose end - apparently called a "life saver" by the hydraulics place I got it from, no idea why! I welded it to the tank using my Mig and then silver soldered it to make sure itt was fluid tight - I tested it with water and it weeped, only a tiny bit but a miss as as good as a mile here so I tried again and it leaked again, worse! So, I went in search of something I could use to ensure it was 100% fuel safe. I found a two part epoxy repair putty that was very fluid, flowexed well and hardened in only 10 mins. It was specifically recommended for unleaded fuel and seemed a better bet than just plain Araldite which was my intuitive response. So I mixed some up, worked it in and left it to set. A quick test showed it was water proof, I put a little air pressure in the tank too and it was fine. So I emptied the tank, dried it out as best I could and refitted it all. I took the opportunity to replace all the fuel p...

Well I have now welded a fuel tank and lived to tell the tale! I drained and cleaned the tank - just washed it out with water. There was surprisingly little crap inside, a few flakes but probably the cleanest tanls I've ever seen! I welded in new a 3/8 outlet at the base of the tank and plumbed it all back in without the helper pump using 3/8 hose. All the returns from PRV via cooling coil and from the metering unit now go straight back into the tank like a 2.5 PI rather than through the filter as I did have them - I need to sort out a better blanking plug for the filter. I also repositioned the filter slightly lower - shoudl be able to make a boot floor now. I wish I could remember who offered me some plywood to do this with! Anyway, it all seems petrol tight and working (I've fired it up) but I only had a one gallon container to save some petrol, the rest went into the Sixfire. I've bought another can for the RBRR so at least I can fill two up and out a couple of gallons ...

A little trip around Reading's plumbings and builder's merchants has turned up the neccesary 80mm pipe to make up a filter housing. OK it's an 82mm grey soil pipe 45 degree bend - cut down fore and aft to allow the K&N to fit under the bonnet and to the side of the radiator - it's pretty tight and I've yet to refit the grill but I think it'll be OK. I'm disappointed that the chrome face of the filter is facing the fresh air but that's the way it ended up. I have seen a Pipercross filter that has some gimmic "vector cone" intake that takes air into the centre of the cone - that would be better so I'm going to see if I can get one of those. The K&N is OK and didn't cost me much - it's off a boy racer's Nova! Another cheap and nasty eBay special. Here are some photos of the finished job, I sanded the pipe to provide a key and painted it black so it doesn't look so obvious! There is no real support for the filter or the ...

eBay.co.uk: Triumph Herald Saloon / Convertible 1960 (item 270026084918 end time 13-Sep-06 10:04:06 BST) Spotted on eBay down under - you're sure to get noticed in this!! I was looking for a Coupe to see what prices are like these days - I've got a couple of years before my eldest daughter needs a car and she's set on a Coupe, the earlier the better but anything will do - ideal spec would be one on a Mk2 chassis with tatty paint but bodily sound - that's so we can paint it! She has made it clear that Alpine Mauve and Spa White is her preferred colour scheme. Anyway, it's not a super serious search at the moment but of the right car came uup I'd be duty bound to buy it, god knows where the money would come from, maybe I could sell a kidney?

OK so it's not ideal but it's better than nowt - a cheapo K&N off eBay (just to see if it'll work) plonked onto the plenum - yes it clears the inner wing but it fouls the bonnet top - angle it down a bit and it fits BUT it's not in the right place. I think reposition the expansion bottle and some 80mm tubing should allow me to put it right in the cold air flow at the front. I've been told that there is a soil pipe made at 80mm but I can't seem to find any in the local DIY shops, I've been told Jewson may have some so I'll try there in the week. I've got some travelling to do next week so I may stumble across one, will throw a spare plenum in the boot of the Eurobox just in case :-) I have a neighbour who is a plumber, wonder if he has anything in his van - right, I'm off on the scrounge!

Here's the fuel part having dealt with the sparks below - a fuel pressure gauge, it T's off the metering unit (and that union was damn expensive - £25!) - at the moment it's a lash up, I wasn't going to leave it permanently in the car but I may change my mind! And the other end is just gaffer taped through the quarterlight! The gauge was an El Cheapo and not being damped in any way is hard to read - if I do go permanent I'll need to find a better one more in keeping with the rest of the instruments - I've seen industrial glycerin filled ones that look ideal but are expensive. Also, with my history of fuel in the cabin I will go for some armoured hose! A quick change round of the pumps shows me that the original pump (the one that draws over 5 amps) is in fact kicking out the ideal pressure - between 100 and 110 PSI (the needle moves about a bit but between the right numbers!). So, it may draw an amp more than the spare but at least it pumps enough to run the ca...

The new leads arrived as promised from the TSSC, I am impressed. Of course I have since been shown them a few quid cheaper at http://www.rallydesign.co.uk/ just watch the VAT and postage charges! So I went into the garage today with a few jobs in mind - first off I would fit my new leads. Removing the old leads, that didn't look at all bad, revealed a bit of a horror - the king lead literally fell apart in my hand - the terminal stayed in the distributor cap and the rest of the lead came off - it wasn't jammed in as I removed what was left with my fingers. No 6 was similar, the crimped end wasn't - if you see what I mean! So, on with the new! These are nice leads, real thought has gone into their manufacture - each lead is numbered, the plug caps are angled appropriate to their position (some are straight) the dizzy cap connectors are right angled so clearance isn't a problem now and finally you get some little clips to tidy them up. Here's the installation, I have...

I was looking for solutions to my plug lead clearance issues - with the mechanical drive take-off for tacho and metering unit the dizzy sits proud, it puts the straight entry plug leads in contact with the bonnet top. I suspect some of my misfire issues have been caused by this. I have found a loose plug lead twice now and despite careful attention to making the connection at the dizzy cap it was loose again after my last run out. I'd been recommended to try Magnecor leads so off I went to find some. Doing my usual price comparisons I couldn't find anyone supplying really cheaply then I remembered a conversation with fellow TSSC member Tim Bancroft - he said he'd bought his from the TSSC, I had dismissed this as silly, because the TSSC shop is always expensive, isn't it? Well, I found something quite surprising - the Triumph Sports Six Club shop was in fact the cheapest for these leads and had the lowest P&P charges too, not way cheaper but nevertheless the best pri...

I popped down my hydraulics place again, saw Steve (we're mates now) and got a union and hose to attach my pressure gauge to the metering unit - now we can see what's going on. Sure enough there it is, a problem - only 80 PSI. It needs to be between 100 and 110 psi. ASdjusting the PRV and swapping out the PRV made no difference - the pump (spare) is not delivering enough pressure at tickover. So with the gauge gaffer taped to the dash and the pipe coming out of the bonnet I took it to the TSSC meeting and for a blast - at no point did the pressure get over 90 psi and at full throttle under load it dropped to just over 70 psi (and the car felt strangled) As the injectors trigger at 60 psi (sp the book says) I suspect that's getting close to their limitation. So, stuff to try - change the pump for the original, the one that draws more amps than the spare and see what that does. Can't do it now, need some sleep as I'm off to Norwich for a 9am meeting another re-organ...

I recently had a ride in fellow CT member and Blogger Dave Powell's Spit, the Beast. Very rapid and very well prepared. Unfortunatley the car ate a valve on the way home from the track day - now that's a real shame. More details on Dave's blog where you can follow the trials and tribulations http://www.crazyspitfire.blogspot.com/

Well the pumps seem to have worked, it never stuttered or stalled on a 150 mile round trip. I used A roads through towns etc for half of it then blatted back on the motorway at an indicated 80 for the other half - those 150 miles used 6.5 gallons of petrol - that's 23 miles to the gallon. Doesn't sound that good but when you consider that it used to struggle to reach 10 I'm reasonably happy! I also took the opportunity to test the temperature of the pumps - under the cooling coil on the spare (the coil was not connected) the temp was 48 degrees, the actual pump body was 38 degrees. That all seems quite hot to me. The car's still not 100% - down on power at the top end, tick over is crap (too low and it will stall eventually), the misfire still seems to be there occasionally and that vibration in the drive train is still there at over an indicated 80. It is not that easy to start and feels like it's running rich. So, what to do - well first off I have to consult with...

The day wasn't over so I decided to have a crack at the car - poor running first, checked tappets and equalised them all, only one was way out - No 5 (exhaust) had opened up, I couldn't see any reason but there was the cause of my noisey top end. I had a look at the plugs, 5 & 6 dark the others OK, well lighter. Wiggles a few leads - No 6 was loose - very loose! Could that be it? Put it all back together and yes! There you go, check the bleeding obvious first. Now the pump - a little head scratching and a look on the bench to see what was in the parts bin. The car now sports a Facet low pressure, high flow pump plumbed upstream of the Lucas pump (the temp one at the moment without the cooling coil connected). This should help the Lucas pump draw fuel all the time - we''ll see. Also I took the opportunity to play with my newly replaced multimeter (thanks Draper!)- pump one (the one that's properly mounted and has the connected cooling coil) draws 5.25 amps, the s...

Hmmm, the trip out to the Triumph World picnic did not go according to plan - Oh we got there OK with both cars and had a good day there. Catching up with old friends was good and although the morning looked wet, the weather turned out to be great. As I pulled up I heard the fuel pump noise change and the engine stopped - cavitation! Arse! So with lots of people having a look I canvassed opinion from the gathered PI intelligenci. There weren't any new ideas but some rationale for old ones. The tank set up probably needs revising - it's a syphoner at the moment and that could be changed to a drainer by adding a union. Dave at Canley's recommended making a swirl pot inside the tank - I like this idea but I'm not sure my welding is up to it - maybe braze it. Also, heat in a petrol tank could be fun :-) A helper pump could be one solution rather than the above surgery but that's two pumps = twice the potential for problems. Also, the spill from the PRV and the Metering...